Security News > 2020 > November > Brit Conservative Party used 10 million people's names to derive their country of origin, ethnicity and religion according to ICO report

The UK's ruling Conservative Party has been using personal data in a way that spots an individual's likely county of origin, ethnic origin and religion based on their first and last name.

According to an ICO report, the Tory party purchased so-called "Estimated onomastic data" and appended it to the records of 10 million voters.

"Where no Article 9 condition can be identified for the processing of special category data such as estimated onomastic data, the processing of this data must cease," said the report Audits of data protection compliance by UK political parties.

The ICO found that the UK's opposition Labour only sourced data from one supplier which used information about individuals aggregated from multiple sources.

"The ICO's report analysing political parties' data protection practices highlights a number of compliance issues with current data protection law. While it is good that the parties have made commitments to rectify shortcomings, it has come several years after the GDPR's implementation which is concerning."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/11/12/uk_conservative_party_used_peoples/